A chef was yesterday ordered to pay £10,000 in damages to a former friend he falsely accused of being a paedophile on Facebook.
Jeremiah Barber posted an indecent image of children on Raymond Bryce's page on the social networking website along with the comment: 'Ray, you like kids and you are gay so I bet you love this picture, Ha ha'.
The image, which hundreds of users could see, showed Mr Bryce superimposed on to a collage of pornographic pictures.

Jeremiah Barber, left, posted images of child porn on Raymond Bryce's Facebook page and wrote 'you like kids and you are gay'

It was 'tagged' with Mr Bryce's name, allowing his 800 friends on the site to see it.

But Barber also attached the name of 11 others to the image, meaning the number of users who could access it would have been well into the thousands.

Fearing he would be attacked by vigilantes, 24-year-old Mr Bryce reported the false accusation to police before launching a claim for libel.

Barber, also 24 and from Stafford, has already admitted making and distributing an indecent image and was sentenced to 150 hours community service.

Raymond Bryce outside the High Court

But his victim, who is now a law student, pursued the civil claim against his former school friend and was awarded £10,000 at the High Court yesterday for the stress and anxiety the incident caused him.

Making the award, Mr Justice Tugendhat noted the large number of unsuspecting website users who could have seen the picture before it was removed.

The court heard the dispute between the pair arose after Mr Bryce lent Barber £80 which the chef failed to pay back.

A source said Mr Bryce, who used to work as a bailiff, took the case to the county court to recover the debt.

It was during this process that Barber posted the indecent picture in November 2008, although he removed it within 24 hours.

Representing himself, Mr Bryce told the court he was still waiting for an apology from Barber over the 'upsetting' Facebook slur, which he said 'made me appear to be a paedophile with homosexual tendencies, neither of which is true'.

The student, who recently finished his first year at Staffordshire University, lives with his sister Jennifer and parents Charles and Diana in Stone, also in the county.

Mrs Bryce told the court the family feared reprisal attacks over the untrue allegation, as 'some people just think there's no smoke without fire'.

Setting the damages award, the judge said: 'Damages in libel actions are awarded as compensation, not as punishment, to vindicate reputation, to compensate for harm to that reputation and as compensation for injury to feelings.

'This was not only defamatory, but a defamation which goes to a central aspect of Mr Bryce's private life as well as his public reputation.

'This post was deeply offensive to him, but also a cause for alarm.

'He could not go out in public because he feared he would be a victim of violence, which is not infrequently the result for those accused of paedophilia.'

Barber was neither present or represented at the hearing and the judge imposed an injunction banning him from repeating the libel.

Mr Bryce, who suffers from Asperger's syndrome and works part-time as a doorman to fund his studies, said last night: 'Justice has been served.
'I found the whole incident grotesque and disturbing and it is ridiculous that Jeremiah could ever have found such a thing amusing, as he claimed to have done.

'I was determined not to let him get away with it and that is why I have sought recourse through the courts.'

The case comes two years after a businessman was awarded £22,000 in damages over fake entries posted on Facebook.

Grant Raphael, a cameraman, set up a false profile of Matthew Firscht which wrongly said he was signed up to gay groups and had lied to avoid paying loans.
The pair had gone to school together in Brighton and worked together in a TV production company before falling out in 2000.

Jeremy Clarke-Williams, a partner specialising in defamation law at London law firm Russell, Jones, and Walker, said: 'Users of Facebook and other social networking sites can be just as much subject to the laws of libel as other media outlets if the information, as in this case, is published online to third parties to view.'

Libel Law is a Delicate Balance

Libel law always is a delicate balance that is difficult to obtain. On one extreme is Thailand where corrupt politicians and wealthy businesses or persons use bogus libel suits to silence the public participatory statements of their critics, (eg the Tesco suits). America is the opposite extreme where almost any wacko can accuse you of being a rapist, pedo or any other criminal act, and you have virtually no recourse against them even if you are acquitted so as to not discourage victims (even liars and manipulators) from coming forward.
Britain must be somewhere in the middle.